TRAN


TRAN is a text-to-speech program for the IBM-PC. It can read ASCII text
files, translate normal English spelling to phonemes, and sound out each
phoneme through the speaker of the IBM-PC.

usage: tran [+/-flags] [-options] [filename]

The filename is an ASCII text file (with no word processor formatting
codes). If no filename is given TRAN reads input from the keyboard.
The flags and options control various features of the program. A '+'
turns the flag on and a '-' turns the flag off. Options can use either
'+' or '-'.

flags: + = on, - = off
p type output of phoneme translation [off]
r add rule no. to phoneme translation [off]
s say output [on]
t echo input to console [off]
T do phoneme translation [on]
v type other internal information [off]

options:
c say the time of day [once]
C say the time of day [every 10 seconds]
d1 N use N for space rate timing [5]
d2 N use N for voice rate timing [1]
R print all pronunciation rules
? type usage

The following are example of ways to use the TRAN program. You can have
tran type out and read this file with the command:

tran +t tran.doc

If you also want to see the phoneme translation add the +p flag:

tran +p +t tran.doc

You can save the phoneme translation in a file by typing:

tran -s +p tran.doc > tran.phn

and listen to the phoneme at some other time file by typing:

tran -T tran.phn

The TRAN program will say the time once if you type:

tran +t +c

or will continue to say the time every 10 seconds if you type:

tran +t +C

There are two timing parameters, d1 and d2, that control the rate that
TRAN speaks. Making d1 larger increases the pauses between words and
making d2 larger lowers the pitch of the voice phonemes. Both d1 and d2
must have a value of 1 or greater. On an IBM-PC/XT, good values for the
timing parameters are d1=2 and d2=1. If these parameters are not set
explicitly, the program will try to determine acceptable values
automatically. Setting these values, will let TRAN by-pass the
automatic setting, which save a second or two starting the program.
These values can be set on the command line:

tran -d1 2 -d2 1 ...

or by using the environment variable TRAN to pass these values as
d1,d2:

set TRAN=2,1

On a 10 MHz IBM-PC/AT the timing prarameters need to be larger, d1=4
d2=13.

Most of the speech-to-text rules used in the tran program come from an
article in an IEEE journal:

Elovitz, H.S., Johnson, R., McHugh, A., and Shore, J.E. (1976).
"Letter-to-Sound Rules for Automatic Translation of English Text to
Phonetics," IEEE Transactions on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal
Processing, Vol. ASSP-24(6), 446-458.

The program contains a set of 35 phonemes, each encoded as a sequence of
bits controlling the position (in or out) of the PC speaker. The
phoneme codes come from the public domain program SPEECH by Andy
McGuire.

Send your comments and suggestions to:

Stephen Neely
11230 Ohio St.
Omaha, NE 68131